Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/32

30 North use all their power to give liberty to the slaves, which they would use to secure freedom to themselves. If they would use the torch and sabre to obtain and secure freedom to themselves, let them use the same weapons to give freedom to the slaves of Virginia.

Now they are politically, not morally, bound to aid slaveholders in their unprovoked, inhuman and murderous assault upon the slaves and their defenceless wives and children, and to shoot down the slaves if they attempt resistance or insurrection. Let them from this hour make an everlasting covenant with the slaves and the slaves' God, to incite and aid them to rebellion against man-stealers; and incite them to insurrection, and defend them against all who would crush them back into slavery, by all such means as they would use to defend themselves. This is what God and Humanity demand of every man and woman in the North, and in the world.

Subjection to an outward, arbitrary authority is the basis of chattel slavery, and of all oppression. The power of the Church and State, the consuming wrath, the lash, the bowie-knife, the revolver, the rifle and bloodhound of slaveholders, and their allies, and the vengeance and terror of an Almighty God, are brought to bear on the ignorant, cowering slaves, to crush out the last vestige of their manhood, and bring them into an unresisting, unreasoning, humble submission to that arbitrary, bloody power that enslaves them. The souls of the slaves fall prostrate, having no will of their own, and deeming every rebellion, insurrectionary thought and feeling, a crime deserving scourging and death, and eternal banishment from God and heaven. The mission of anti-slavery is to inspire them with rebellious thoughts and feelings, and incite them to insurrectionary words and deeds (not deeds of violence and blood) against their inhuman and godless masters.

So that same power of Church and State, the fierce wrath and threatened vengeance of slave-breeders, and the entire power of the government and religion of the nation, and the terrors of death, judgment and eternity, have been brought to bear on the people of the North, to compel them into humble subserviency to the Slave Power. You and your coadjutors have long labored to incite the cowering and